UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is the open, multi-vendor replacement for the aging BIOS standard, which first appeared in IBM computers in 1976. The UEFI standard is extensive, covering the full boot architecture. This article focuses on a single useful but typically overlooked feature of UEFI: secure boot.

Often maligned, you've probably encountered UEFI secure boot only when you disabled it during initial setup of your computer. Indeed, the introduction of secure boot was mired with controversy over Microsoft being in charge of signing third-party operating system code that would boot under a secure boot environment.